Abstract
There are a great many minority cultural and religious practices that harm animals. A difficult question facing liberal democratic communities is whether these practices should be legally exempt from generally applicable anti-cruelty legislation. Here I consider two recent appeals to Rawlsian political liberalism to manage disputes over minority practices that harm animals. My analysis draws out the different implications of these approaches by considering how they apply to the case of religious slaughter. I argue that the first approach is internally incoherent, and that the second effectively guarantees the protection of religious freedoms over the interest of animals in not suffering. I conclude by suggesting that political liberalism is not a useful framework for those looking to defend animal interests.
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Notes
- 1.
For convenience, I use the term “animal” to refer to nonhuman animals. I do not mean to imply that human beings are not animals.
- 2.
For further discussion, see Jonathan Seglow, “Theories of Religious Exemptions,” in G Calder & E Ceva (eds.), Diversity In Europe: Dilemmas Of Differential Treatment In Theory And Practice (Routledge/UACES: Abingdon, 2010), 52–64; Andrew Shorten, “Cultural Exemptions, Equality and Basic Interests,” Ethnicities, 10/1 (2010), 100–126.
- 3.
See Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 32–46; Paula Casal, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Animals?,” Journal of Political Philosophy 11/1 (2003), 1–22.
- 4.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (expanded edition) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 21, 244–246.
- 5.
See, for example, Ruth Abbey, “Rawlsian Resources for Animal Ethics,” Ethics and the Environment 12/1 (2007), 1–22; Robert Garner, “Animals, Politics and Justice: Rawlsian Liberalism and the Plight of Non-Humans,” Environmental Politics 12/2 (2003), 3–22; Robert Garner, “Rawls, Animals and Justice: New Literature, Same Response,” Res Publica 18/2 (2012), 159–172.
- 6.
See Chad Flanders, “Public Reason and Animal Rights,” in Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg (eds.), Political Animals and Animal Politics (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 44–57; Federico Zuolo, “The Priority of Suffering Over Life. How to Accommodate Animal Welfare and Religious Slaughter,” Les Ateliers de l’Ethique/The Ethics Forum 9/3 (2014), 162–183.
- 7.
Casal; Flanders.
- 8.
Zuolo.
- 9.
Rawls (2005), 38–39.
- 10.
Id. at 35–36.
- 11.
Id. at xlv, 12–13, 389.
- 12.
Id. at 13–14.
- 13.
Id. at 10, 12.
- 14.
Id. See Lecture VI and “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.”
- 15.
Id. at 226.
- 16.
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, edited by Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 91.
- 17.
Id. at 91–92.
- 18.
Rawls (2005), 214.
- 19.
Id. at 227–230; see also Samuel Freeman, Rawls (London: Routledge, 2007), 393–394.
- 20.
Methods of religious slaughter have courted controversy for well over a century and are practiced on millions of animals each year in the UK alone. However, several theorists have argued that the case to exempt religious slaughter from anti-cruelty legislation is fundamentally flawed because neither Jews nor Muslims are required by their religion to eat meat (Barry 2001, 45; Casal 2003, 6). Thus, it is not a violation of religious freedom to prohibit practices of religious slaughter since is it perfectly compatible with Judaism and Islam that its followers pursue a vegetarian diet. In response, it can be argued that it is unfair and hypocritical to burden religious minorities with a legally enforced vegetarianism when the mainstream majority continue to enjoy the flesh of the billions of animals who suffer horrendously in factory farms. Moreover, since “politicians are not drawing up plans to close down such farms, nor are they under huge pressure from the public to do so,” it cannot be sincerely argued that prohibiting religious slaughter exemptions is part of long-term plan to eradicate nonhuman animal suffering in food production (Alasdair Cochrane, Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 200; cf. Casal 2003, 6).
- 21.
Shechita UK, A Guide to Shechita (2009), 8.
- 22.
J. M. Regenstein, M. M. Chaudry, and C. E. Regenstein, “The Kosher and Halal Food Laws,” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 2/3 (2003), 121–122.
- 23.
Islamic law is often taken to be compatible with the pre-slaughter stunning so long as the method of stunning only renders the animal unconscious and does not kill them. Indeed, the Food Standards Agency in the UK reported that 84% of animals killed in accordance with Halal dietary codes were stunned prior to slaughter in 2013 (Food Standards Agency “Results of the 2013 Animal Welfare survey in Great Britain” (2015), 4. Available at: https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2013-animal-welfare-survey.pdf (accessed 29/08/2016).
- 24.
European Union Council Directive 1009/2009, “On the Protection of Animals at the Time of Killing,” Official Journal of the European Union, 303 (2009), 1–30.
- 25.
The Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015, Schedule 3. Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1782/contents/made (accessed 29/08/2016).
- 26.
Andrew Linzey “Religious Slaughter,” in Andrew Linzey (ed.), The Global Guide to Animal Protection (Urbana, Chicago & Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 171.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
British Veterinary Association “Parliamentary Briefing - Slaughter without Stunning and Food Labelling” (2015), 2. Available at: http://www.bva.co.uk/uploadedFiles/Content/News,_campaigns_and_policies/Campaigns/welfare-at-slaughter-june-2015-final3.pdf (accessed 29/08/2016).
- 31.
See, for example, Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), “Report on the Welfare of Farmed Animals at Slaughter or Killing Part 1: Red Meat Animals” (2003), 36. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/325241/FAWC_report_on_the_welfare_of_farmed_animals_at_slaughter_or_killing_part_one_red_meat_animals.pdf (accessed 29/08/2016).
- 32.
The petition closed in March 2015 (accessed June 3, 2016 at https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/64331). A transcript of the Commons debate is available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150223/halltext/150223h0001.htm (accessed August 29, 2016).
- 33.
Details of the opposing e-petition is available at: https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/74830 (accessed August 29, 2016).
- 34.
HC Deb February 23, 2015, c31WH.
- 35.
See Jeremy A. Rovinsky “Cutting Edge: The Debate over Regulation of Ritual Slaughter in the Western World,” California Western International Law Journal 45 (2014), 79.
- 36.
While many who oppose religious slaughter do so by appeal to animal rights, not all agree that animals can be the bearers of rights and there is deep disagreement even among those who do about which rights nonhuman animals do in fact have. For example, while all animal rights theorists agree that nonhuman animals have a right not to be treated cruelly by humans, they disagree about whether nonhuman animals have rights to live and liberty. I cannot hope to resolve these issues here, so I will speak in terms of the protection of animal welfare, which arguably best captures the majority sentiment of those advocating for an end to religious slaughter.
- 37.
Flanders; Zuolo.
- 38.
Casal, 2.
- 39.
Id. at 10.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Rawls (2005), 15–21.
- 42.
Id. at 246.
- 43.
Flanders, 53–54.
- 44.
Id. at 53.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Id. at 54.
- 47.
Rawls (2005), 245.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Flanders, 56.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
To be fair to Flanders, he does recognize that “cruelty” is a contested and nebulous concept, but he maintains that it counts as a fixed point in our moral reasoning all the same.
- 52.
Rawls (2005), 8.
- 53.
Id. at 124.
- 54.
Id. at 8.
- 55.
Siobhan O’Sullivan, Animals, Equality and Democracy (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 26.
- 56.
Some of these practices have been banned in the UK, but there has been no equivalent ban on the import of products yielded from these practices. So, while it is illegal to force feed geese and keep calves in veal crates, consumption of foie gras and veal is not legislated against and the interests of animals beyond the UK’s borders are not regarded as equal in weight. Moreover, while veal crates and force feeding have been banned, “more ethical” procedures have been introduced so that veal and foie gras can still be produced in the UK. It is unlikely that these more ethical measures are free of pain and suffering and so the idea that they are cruelty-free is highly questionable.
- 57.
Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, “Animal Rights, Multiculturalism, and the Left,” Journal of Social Philosophy 45/1 (2014), 127.
- 58.
Rawls (2001), 29.
- 59.
Zuolo, 164.
- 60.
Id. at 167.
- 61.
Id. at 177.
- 62.
See Rawls (2005), 191–194.
- 63.
Zuolo, 176.
- 64.
Rawls (2005), 193.
- 65.
Zuolo, 178.
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Pepper, A. (2017). Political Liberalism, Human Cultures, and Nonhuman Lives. In: Cordeiro-Rodrigues, L., Mitchell, L. (eds) Animals, Race, and Multiculturalism . The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66568-9_3
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